why Mr. Pryor didn't shoot, and there he was gazing at it as if a
snake had charmed him; his hands shaking a little, his cheeks
almost red, his eyes very bright.

"Shoot!" I whispered. "It won't stay all day!"

He forgot how to push the ramrod like I showed him, so he reached
out and tried to hit it with the gun.

"Don't do that!" I said.

"But it's getting away! It's getting away!" he cried.

"Well, what if it is?" I asked, half provoked. "Do you suppose I
really would hurt a poor little muskrat? Maybe it has six hungry
babies in its home."

"Oh THAT way," he said, but he kept looking at it, so he made me
think if I hadn't been there, he would have thrown a stone or hit
it with a stick. It is perfectly wonderful about how some men
can't get along without killing things, such little bits of
helpless creatures too. I thought he'd better be got from the
jungle, so I invited him to see the place at the foot of the hill
below our orchard where some men thought they had discovered gold
before the war. They had been to California in '49, and although
they didn't come home with millions, or anything else except sick
and tired, they thought they had learned enough about gold to
know it when they saw it.

I told him about it and he was interested and anxious to see the